Sunday, March 13, 2005

Conspiracy Theory Made Easy

A fascinating article today entitled "Untimely Deaths in Ukraine", disputing the official explanations of "strange suicides and car crashes" in the Ukraine.

Get a load of this, and from the Los Angeles Times, no less:

The former Ukrainian interior minister, scheduled to meet in just a few hours with prosecutors to give testimony in a high-profile case of political murder, aimed a gun at his chin and fired, sending a bullet ripping through his cheek and out his upper jaw. Then he aimed it at his temple and fired again.

Suicide, government investigators ruled....Zvarych, the justice minister, has expressed doubt that the former interior minister could have recovered sufficiently from the shock of the first wound to have delivered the second.

"I have certain doubts personally speaking about whether someone can pull the trigger twice in order to commit suicide," he said. "There's this threshold of pain, I think, that one would need to be able to cross in order to be able to do that, something called a 'pain syndrome,' that I think is very difficult to overcome.

Consider that Gary Webb - "the last North American career journalist," in Al Giordano's words - was also judged to have killed himself with two gunshots to the head. Consider the mainstream media was as incurious about the circumstances of his death as it had disgraced itself regarding the substance of his investigations. And consider it was the LA Times which played the point in Webb's character assassination, even in his obituary.

My purpose isn't to rehash speculation about Webb's death, but to underscore the selective speculation of the American press.

Imagine if, in the space of five years, figures of the stature of John F Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F Kennedy had been murdered anywhere else in the world.

Imagine if finely-milled anthrax had been mailed to the opponents of Hugo Chavez, just as his government introduced "El Acto Del Patriota," which promised to consolidate power in the presidency and violate the spirit and letter of the Venezuelan constitution. And imagine if the investigation led to a bioweapons lab of the Venezuelan military, and then faltered.

Imagine if "Pavlov Wellstonski," Vladimir Putin's leading opponent of the war in Chechnya, had died in a plane crash which decided control of the Duma.

Nothing is as disreputable to the American mainstream media as "conspiracy theory," but it's riddled with conspiracy theorists who apply their craft liberally to other countries. "Conspiracy theory" appears to be disreputable only in domestic practice, not in international theory. The LA Times' byline attributes the story to Kim Murphy, but it may as well be Alex Jones, with the singular exception that the suspicious deaths are made in the Ukraine, not the United States.

The Times could easily publish a story entitled "Untimely Deaths in the US." Except it would never do such a thing. So I guess it's not that easy after all.

1445 Comments:

... and that is why it was so pleasing to have those russian journalists dispute bush on the "freedom of the press" in russia and the usa, and by the same token why it was so depressing to have bush's lame comeback that in america, the government doesn't fire journalists. jeez.

The LA Times is a joke. Their articles are typically dumbed down. The only paper in LA that ever did any real investigative journalism (the LA Weekly I believe) got bought out and then canned. That happened right about the time the Catholic child abuse thing blew up and the Weekly had been all over it for months.

The pervasive stereotype of the conspiracy theorist is that of a paranoid, hyper-vigilant figure synthesizing an epic quantity of signs and symbols to draw up idiosyncratic arraignments of shadowy forces directing world affairs from behind the scenes. This caricature of a hard-driven eccentric loner, battling the unseen wielding only the weapon of information, has been drawn in a variety of movies, television programs, and books. Paradigmatic examples include Mel Gibson's character in Richard Donner's film Conspiracy Theory, the JFK assassination researcher in Richard Linklater's groundbreaking indie classic Slacker, numerous characters in Pynchon and Delillo novels, and – of course – the Fox Mulder character on the hit series The X - Files. It was The X - Files that first brought this figure into the mainstream, by capitalizing on the broad overlap between conspiracy theory and UFOlogy. Indeed the program's mottoes ("Trust no one" and "The truth is out there") also exemplify the epistemological double-bind of many paranoid conspiracy theorists – or "conspiranoiacs."

In spite of the tremendous energy exponents of the conventional wisdom put into denigrating conspiranoiac social, political, and historical analysis, such ideas resonate with a large enough portion of the general population to support a substantial cottage industry. Entrepreneurs working in this field include people such people as Art Bell, David Ickes, Alex Jones, Russ Kick, and many others, all typically very savvy in cross-promoting their work through the internet, radio, books, video, and lectures.

Conspiranoiac leitmotifs are tremendously varied and often contradictory. One good example is the varied attitudes towards a perennial bete noire, the Council on Foreign Relations. While some see it as the high cabal steering America into godless subordination under a world socialist government led by the United Nations, others see it as the high cabal steering America into transnational corporate imperialism. Conspiranoiacs also have a wide variety of attitudes towards their material. Some exercise the detached, self-reflexive irony of The X - Files' Fox Mulder. Some, particularly UFOlogists, push this irony so far into high camp playfulness that a pilgrimage to Roswell, New Mexico or Area 51 in Nevada is more about whimsical affinity group bonding than true discovery. Some organize their lives around their beliefs, exhibiting all of the tedious zealotry of a True Believer. Some exhibit the dispassionate rigor of social scientists.

Contemporary America is of two minds toward conspiranoia. On one hand, it has become the default popular view, one of commodified skepticism towards history and government. This sentiment has proliferated rapidly since the 1960s and Watergate. With the collapse of the reassuring dualities of the Cold War over the course of the 1990s, it has culminated in a pervasive apocalyptic teleology.

On the other hand, the disavowal of conspiranoia has also become an integral part of the conventional wisdom itself, a social technology of control that establishes the boundaries of "responsible discourse” by reflecting elite consensus on the fundamental nature of social reality, in accordance with the elite's own class interests. This makes for an incredibly effective means of establishing ruling class hegemony by controlling dissent, foreclosing alternatives, engineering support, and transmuting the interests of the ruling class into that of the nation as a whole.

One is apt to be labeled a conspiracy theorist for merely suggesting that there is a ruling class that seeks to maintain hegemony, to say nothing of the idea that the ruling class occasionally uses conspiratorial methods. Rather than conspiracy theory, most media and intellectual gatekeepers prefer to view elite behavior through the lens of "somnambulist theory," "coincidence theory," "incompetence theory," or "spontaneity theory." No amount of intellectual gymnastics will be spared to avoid arriving at the conclusion that the rich and powerful, like the rest of us, might possibly act in support of their own perceived best interests. This is, of course, in spite of a voluminous sociological literature on the power elite and “elite deviance,” a danger that laws against conspiracy are presumably designed to protect us from.

True freedom of mind requires not only the negative absence of constraint but the positive presence of other alternatives. Even though the rich and powerful have repeatedly used conspiracy to get richer and more powerful, to mention this sociological fact immediately draws the most vicious criticism, including charges of superstition, cynicism, paranoia, hysteria, and primitivism.

Conspiranoia can and should be a tool of empirical explanation - it is possible to point fingers and name names. The powers that be, thousands of people enslaving six billion, act not in conspiracy but in tacit collusion, supporting an agenda of domination fostered by the similarity of their backgrounds, calibrated at key forums and through key organizations.

Ultimately, however, the appeal of conspiranoia is that of narrative itself: narrative’s ability to explain, predict, motivate, and entertain. Although conspiranoia offers the aficionado an integrated worldview, a weltanschauung, it is also provides more than this. When confronted with the potential evidence of conspiracy, one must ask, as in criminal trials: "Is there motive, means, and opportunity?" All too often there is, especially at the intersection of politics, law, high finance, intelligence, diplomacy, covert military operations, narcotrafficking, organized crime, and the media simulacrasphere – the place where so much of 20th century history has been made, and the juncture the Bush family has been sitting at for the last four generations.

Life writing can be an effective means of examining this nexus because "like biography, human conspiracy originates in a preconception of the person as historical agent." Instead of the usual characterization of conspiracy theory as an individual psychopathology, conspiranoia can be better thought of as a populist fusion of life writing, historiography, and political science which provides explanatory narratives that void the epistemic warrant of the elite consensus on history, social reality, and the “conventional wisdom." This is a major development in the long tradition of popular resistance to state power and economic oligarchy, not of the right vs. left, but of the bottom vs. the top.

At its best, conspiranoia is a radical exercise of the skepticism and critical reason at the heart of the Enlightenment project. In this sense it represents a last-ditch effort by the supposed repositories of popular sovereignty – the people - to save liberal humanism and the Enlightenment from their demented doppelgangers – the program of perpetual war for perpetual peace and the enslavement of the autonomous bourgeois subject under regimes of panoptic control managed by technocrats serving the super rich, using all of the awesomely powerful tools made possible by the nation-state system established since the Treaty of Westphalia.

Conspiranoia narratives could be empirical explanations of social reality, since it can easily be argued that "conspiracy is the normal continuation of normal politics by normal means...and where there is no limit to power, there is no limit to conspiracy." The knee-jerk denigration of such attitudes by the mainstream, however, demonstrates that their disavowal has become a vital social technology of control in the late modern age. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, virtually all pre- and anti-capitalist systems have been colonized by "global monetocracy," a transnational corporate socialism that socializes the costs and privatizes the profits. This is kleptocracy by any other name, albeit a far more sophisticated version than that practiced by hacks like Marcos, Duvalier, Mobutu, and their ilk.

Although seemingly at its moment of universal triumph, this system may in fact be teetering on the brink of economic, political, and social collapse, which would surely usher in overt police state fascism in all of its core states. It is precisely the dramatically escalating accumulation of these fundamental contradictions within the global capitalist system that coincidence theorists try to deflect public attention away from with their vilification of conspiracy theories. This relentless disparagement continues even though, ala Occam's Razor, they often provide the simplest, most rational explanation. As Marx said in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the past.”

The power elite deliberately obscure the structural limitations on free will (that they themselves largely created) to mask the sad fact that, as human civilization has evolved from feudalism to democracy, we have traded kings and tsars for presidents and prime ministers but the money power behind the scenes has remained the same. Worse yet, it has allowed only the absolute minimum concessions to the establishment of a sane economic, political, and legal order needed to stave off social revolution.

This is not enough. The regime of capital accumulation survives by feeding off of the subject body while simultaneously stupefying the subject mind with the myth of individual agency and doing everything in the regime's power to ensure that this agency cannot be used in any meaningful way. In such an environment, denigrating conspiranoia becomes a means of cordoning off from the masses the facts that they are being lied to every day of their lives by authority figures, and that the consumerist hydrocarbon-based industrial civilization they live in is arguably psychopathic and quite possibly in terminal decline.

While the provisional government of politicians does the lying, they do so in the service of a permanent government above and behind political power, a secular oligarchy working in tacit collusion. In America they are the great commercial dynasties, 500 Fortune companies and their lobbyists, media simulacrasphere, civil and military services, and large research universities, law firms, and charitable foundations. They hire the politicians and establish the boundaries of the politicians' agenda. They authorize the production of regular elections/pageants to protect the brand name of American democracy. They convince a large enough portion of the general population that the system still works, so that the machinery of oppression, theft, enslavement, and murder can continue to operate without friction.

Camps within this oligarchy make effective use of the Bilderberg Group, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Economic Forum at Davos, Bank of International Settlements, World Trade Organization, Council of Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Bohemian Grove, Group of Eight, Trans-Atlantic Business Council, and other organizations to calibrate their rhetoric, achieve consensus, and even set policy superceding that of sovereign governments. This isn't done in smoky star chambers, however, but in the miasmic group think of those with similar backgrounds, class interests, and institutional positions, all pursuing the interests of the global capitalist system by pursuing misguided senses of their own self interest.

As the key nations of transnational corporate imperialism degenerate into police states, they slowly strip citizens of their rights, periodically manufacturing “incidents and crises to use as excuses for increased governmental power. Meanwhile, the media toes the government line, lulling the people – or the “sheeple” – to sleep. Eventually, agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), and militarized local police will confiscate all weapons and imprison any citizens who dare oppose authoritarian rule.”

Although conspiranoiacs exist in great variety, many share a belief in the rough outline of this dystopian nightmare. If true, it is the truth which cannot be spoken. For that reason, the media gatekeepers will continue to dismiss anything that challenges the conventional wisdom as a "conspiracy theory" until some catalyst finally reveals enough of the horrible truth to enough people, facilitating a paradigm shift of world historical importance.

The ills of society can neither be ameliorated nor even adequately described by means of the law alone. Nevertheless, progressive efforts to ameliorate these ills cannot succeed without committed work in the legal field. However, such work will be necessarily defensive in posture until such time as substantial extraparliamentary pressure is brought to bear on the system by means of “either grassroots citizen participation in credible progressive projects or rebellious acts of desperation that threaten the social order.” With adequate reach into a broad enough segment of the general population by leaking past the media oligarchy, and armed with adequate credibility by weeding itself of the pervasive disinformation that so often taints it, conspiranoiac analysis has the potential to precipitate and consolidate a very significant portion of that extraparliamentary pressure. “Like it or not, the people of the fringe are in an apocalyptical struggle: either the elite techniques of control will be perfected to the level where dissent can be abolished, or heretics will mutate to some level of consciousness where they can do holy and miraculous works to resurrect the old dream of freedom for all.”

Although this may seem a millennial hope, it may also be a cogent empirical analysis of a decisive historical crossroads. In any event, until consciousness is liberated to such a degree as to enable the establishment of an abiding regime of peace, social justice, and sustainability, as Rousseau said, "Man is born free, yet he is everywhere in chains."

Webster Tarpley points out America was founded on a conspiracy theory-- it's in the declaration of independence-- that King George was conspiring against the colonists by all his actions. Lincoln was also a conspiracy theorist-- he didn't believe Polk's excuse for the war with Mexico, which was officially an unprovoked attack by Mexico on the US but in actuality was a provoked attack by the Americans on the Mexicans in Mexican territory. Lincoln was heavily ridiculed for believing in this "conspiracy".

So conspiracy theory is a great American tradition. It's just that the media, which really represents the powers that be, covers up any whiff of conspiracy by the same powers that be. I suggest it is time for a new American revolution-- this time rebelling against the 9/11 conspiracy. I am hoping it is close to the point where enough people are fed up of the lies from the government. Oh, what I woudldn't give for a real politician willing to speak the damn truth.

Webster Tarpley points out America was founded on a conspiracy theory-- it's in the declaration of independence-- that King George was conspiring against the colonists by all his actions. Lincoln was also a conspiracy theorist-- he didn't believe Polk's excuse for the war with Mexico, which was officially an unprovoked attack by Mexico on the US but in actuality was a provoked attack by the Americans on the Mexicans in Mexican territory. Lincoln was heavily ridiculed for believing in this "conspiracy".

So conspiracy theory is a great American tradition. It's just that the media, which really represents the powers that be, covers up any whiff of conspiracy by the same powers that be. I suggest it is time for a new American revolution-- this time rebelling against the 9/11 conspiracy. I am hoping it is close to the point where enough people are fed up of the lies from the government. Oh, what I wouldn't give for a real politician willing to speak the damn truth.

Webster Tarpley points out America was founded on a conspiracy theory-- it's in the declaration of independence-- that King George was conspiring against the colonists by all his actions. Lincoln was also a conspiracy theorist-- he didn't believe Polk's excuse for the war with Mexico, which was officially an unprovoked attack by Mexico on the US but in actuality was a provoked attack by the Americans on the Mexicans in Mexican territory. Lincoln was heavily ridiculed for believing in this "conspiracy".

So conspiracy theory is a great American tradition. It's just that the media, which really represents the powers that be, covers up any whiff of conspiracy by the same powers that be. I suggest it is time for a new American revolution-- this time rebelling against the 9/11 conspiracy. I am hoping it is close to the point where enough people are fed up of the lies from the government. Oh, what I wouldn't give for a real politician willing to speak the damn truth.

By the way, this comments system just doesn't work well. I again recommend Haloscan.

Webster Tarpley points out America was founded on a conspiracy theory-- it's in the declaration of independence-- that King George was conspiring against the colonists by all his actions. Lincoln was also a conspiracy theorist-- he didn't believe Polk's excuse for the war with Mexico, which was officially an unprovoked attack by Mexico on the US but in actuality was a provoked attack by the Americans on the Mexicans in Mexican territory. Lincoln was heavily ridiculed for believing in this "conspiracy".

So conspiracy theory is a great American tradition. It's just that the media, which really represents the powers that be, covers up any whiff of conspiracy by the same powers that be. I suggest it is time for a new American revolution-- this time rebelling against the 9/11 conspiracy. I am hoping it is close to the point where enough people are fed up of the lies from the government. Oh, what I wouldn't give for a real politician willing to speak the damn truth.

By the way, this comments system just doesn't work well. I again recommend Haloscan.

Forgive me, but anytime I hear respectful words attributed to Lincoln I want to puke. Dubya hasn't quite won the worst-president-in-history trophy from Lincoln (as of yet). The only great thing Lincoln did was freed the slaves, and that was far from his own idea; I'd say circumstances pretty much forced him to free the slaves.

Anonymous One,Jeff are people in Canada starting to bug out like the US? I hate to say this but alot of folks I know are blocking out all reality,I can't even make contact,hello,earth calling.I went to a basketball party the other night, most of the people were in their mid 40's.I have known most of these people for years,they are starting to scare me with some of the things they say,many show aggression when you mention anything that sounds like a conspriacy,it's like a trigger and they almost seem like they are in a state of shock.Most of them are doing SSRI's,booze,and herb.By the end of the night it was like being in Fox news central,one even thought I was crazy for listening to anything on the net.For these folks,I don't think stand a chance in hell when the big show goes down.Oh,by the way did anyone catch George Lucas on 60 minutes,he says the last instalment of Star Wars will take us on a journey to hell,watch out,maybe the ascended master he is in contact with knows something we don't,later.

“Like it or not, the people of the fringe are in an apocalyptical struggle: either the elite techniques of control will be perfected to the level where dissent can be abolished, or heretics will mutate to some level of consciousness where they can do holy and miraculous works to resurrect the old dream of freedom for all.”

The following was cribbed from James Ellroy’s "American Tabloid" ( A Novel), 1995. It’s the introduction. It speaks for itself.

“ America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can’t ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can’t lose what you lacked at conception. Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless versimilitude can set that line straight. The real Trinity of Camelot was Look Good, Kick Ass, Get Laid. Jack Kennedy was the mythological front man for a particularly juicy slice of our history. He talked a slick line and wore a world-class haircut. He was Bill Clinton minus the pervasive media scrutiny and a few rolls of flab. Jack got whacked at the optimum moment to assure his sainthood. Lies continue to swirl around his eternal flame. It’s time to dislodge his urn and cast light on a few men who attended his ascent and facilitated his fall. They were rogue cops and shakedown artists. They were wire-tappers and soldiers of fortune and faggot lounge entertainers. Had one second of their lives deviated off course, American History would not exist as we know it. It’s time to demythologize an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. It’s time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define their time. Here’s to them.”

So this is where you guys hide out and make up things to poison the minds of the uninformed. I knew there were places like this in the blogosphere, but none have been taken as seriously and none written with such passion. So is the author afraid of a God who is mearciful to sinners like himself? Is the clear thwarting and desolation of evil in our time a threat to your agenda? Or have you simply found a profitability in the peddling of this mind rot to sick individuals. I suggest a soul search my dear Leftists! Do not stop searching until you find yours! The damage you are doing with your evil propoganda will never find representation on the day of your judgement. Forgive your self, God already has. When you come before God for acceptance, he will not be able to accept you as long as long as you have a heart full of hate and distrust. God cannot accept a sinner, if the sinner can't accept God. This site and these words will stand as a testement against you. I would not want to face the living God with this in my life. I'll pray for you all.

Your semi-op-ed is the best piece I have ever read (regarding the lambasting of those who feel the necessity to be guided by truth and justice rather than by jeopardizing fairy tales). I have taken the liberty to cut and paste your work in order to let it, like a glass of excellent wine, sink in over time :)

"So this is where you guys hide out and make up things to poison the minds of the uninformed. I knew there were places like this in the blogosphere, but none have been taken as seriously and none written with such passion. So is the author afraid of a God who is mearciful to sinners like himself?Is the clear thwarting and desolation of evil in our time a threat to your agenda? Or have you simply found a profitability in the peddling of this mind rot to sick individuals. I suggest a soul search my dear Leftists!"

Jesus was about as "left" as you can get.

"Do not stop searching until you find yours!"

I have.

"The damage you are doing with your evil propoganda will never find representation on the day of your judgement."

So basically what you're saying is the writer of this blog will be damned on judgement day for writing on a fasicst nazi pedophile? Is judgement day the day when all the nazi pedophiles get to ascend into heaven or something?

Godfruit - Go read your bible, a little Ivan Illich and then come back and talk to us. You are apparently dumber than a doornob and unable to take in anything other than propaganda. I will pray for you.

Repubs and Dems high up in the u.s govt. are all in it together. they first choose who our next president will be , and then through an orchestrated media, lure us into voting in the man they have selected. they purposely keep the voting close untill the last days when either a major revelation about one opponent is dicovered or when one is reportably beginning to look bad while the other becomes a little better. then we all like lemmings go out and think we have somehow chosen our leader, . . . freedom is an illusion

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